Decorated Gothic Architecture

Decorated Gothic, also called the Decorated style or Second Pointed and often abbreviated Dec, was the second phase of English Gothic architecture, in fashion from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century. It is distinguished by a unification of the arts into one elaborate whole, featuring traceried windows, ornate surface decoration, complex geometry and intricate vaulting, and it introduced new architectural forms, especially the traceried window, along with the ogee arch, the lierne vault and naturalistic foliage carving, using architectural forms ornamentally rather than structurally. The style is generally divided into an earlier Geometrical Decorated phase before about 1290 and a later Curvilinear, or Flowing, Decorated phase after that date. While primarily used for churches it also extended to secular buildings, furnishings, sculpture and applied arts such as metalwork and manuscript illumination.